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Hearing Silences: Practical steps towards inclusive healthcare

How can we bridge cultural divides in our day-to-day practice?

Helping clients with their fertility challenges is always a highly sensitive interaction. As healthcare practitioners it is critical that we fully understand our client's unique fertility journey, the scope of their desired outcomes and the specific type of support that they need.

However open to others we feel we are, we cannot ignore or minimise the gulf that exists between a practitioner from one cultural background and a client from another. Even when both practitioner and client live in the same country and speak the same language, there are differences in history and experience that need to be acknowledged and understood by the practitioner.

The Black Lives Matter movement's rise to prominence in 2020 has increased awareness of contemporary structural racism affecting people of colour in North American, Europe and other white-majority societies. While some of the legacies of centuries of oppression are starting to enter mainstream understanding, the history of medical experimentation on African slaves and the links to modern gynaecology are not explored or examined when we are trained as practitioners.

Similarly, our training in fertility, gynaecology and obstetrics does not discuss the astounding disparities in the number of poor birth experiences and maternal deaths between white people and people of colour in our healthcare systems.

It is not enough to understand, we must act to create change

This course provides healthcare practitioners of all disciplines with a guide to understanding how these historic legacies are relevant to how many people of colour are treated in today's healthcare settings. The course then goes on to provide a practical guide to treating across cultural divides, by explaining:

  • What cultural safety means in practical terms
  • Why cultural safety is very important when a client comes from a different cultural background to the practitioner
  • How to practice cultural safety in our relationships with all of our clients whatever their cultural background.

This course is for you if:

  • You are aware that structural racism can impact the way people of colour and those from religious minorities are treated in heathcare systems
  • You want your healthcare practice to be as inclusive as possible
  • You want to widen the client base of your healthcare practice beyond people who have a similar cultural background to you
  • You have a practice that serves a diverse community but your client base does not appropriately reflect the diversity of that community

Professor Laura Serrant

The course is taught by Laura Serrant, Professor of Community and Public Health Nursing at Sheffield Hallam University. Professor Serrant was a nurse for many years, rising to become a Director of Care, Health and Childcare Services before moving into academia.

As part of her PhD thesis, Professor Serrant developed The Silences Framework, a methodology for healthcare practitioners to follow to ensure that they are providing the space for their clients to explain their experiences and their needs. This allows the practitioner to then provide the best and most appropriate care for the individual.

As well as her academic role, Professor Serrant is now an award-winning speaker and a consultant on equality, diversity and inclusion issues.

What is in the course?

  • 3 hours of video lectures separated into 15 individual topics
  • Accompanying slides are integrated into the videos and also downloadable
  • Downloadable handouts and further reading
  • Full references and bibliography
  • Subtitles with search function on all videos
  • Downloadable audio files so you can listen to the lectures where and when you want

Money should not be a barrier

This course is one of our 'safer practice for every-body' courses and we believe every practitioner should seek to be trained in these issues. As such we have tried to make this course as affordable as possible. If you find that you would like to access this course but cannot afford the minimum priceat this time please contact Naava.